


Sunday Evening, 221B Baker Street

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dear john, M/M, Missing Scene, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:54:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3502433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My take on the final meeting in 221B in wendymarlowe's "Dear John."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunday Evening, 221B Baker Street

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starrla89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrla89/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dear John](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2647979) by [wendymarlowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendymarlowe/pseuds/wendymarlowe). 



> Please be sure to read wendymarlowe's beautiful and ambitious, "Dear John." I promise, you will not regret spending the time.
> 
> This story is my "Chapter 63.5," depicting my vision of the events that unfolded during the meeting at 221B Baker Street.
> 
> There are references within to the other "missing scene" I wrote in the Dear John universe, "Saturday, 31 JAN, 6:10pm," which is my vision of The Date. Check my Works to find it, if you have not already read it. It is also linked at the end of "Dear John," under "works inspired by this one."

*

The front door is unlocked; John is already upstairs. Mrs Hudson’s flat is dark; she must still be seeing that same man—she always slept at his on Sunday and Monday nights. Sherlock smoothes his suit jacket beneath the open front of his coat though it does not need smoothing, and starts the march up the stairs. He hits the giveaway stair a bit harder than necessary, ringing out a warning, and he hears John’s rattling inhalation in response. The door is open, spilling yellowish lamplight onto the landing;  Sherlock steps into the dim pool of light and pauses, reluctantly hitting his mark, gathering his moment-before.

John is standing in the kitchen, between the table and the sink. Two rocks-glasses on the tabletop, both beaded all over with water; John has rinsed them of two years’ dust. Beside them, the familiar sensual curves of a bottle of 18-year-old Macallan. In the sink, a plastic bag full of chipped ice, torn open.

“Drink?”

“If you are.”

John nods tightly and fetches the glasses, dips them one after the other into the plastic bag, catching a bit of ice in each.

“May want to keep your coat on; Mrs Hudson keeps it shut so it’s cold. I turned up the heat, got the fire going, but it might take time to warm up.” John gestures toward the lounge with his elbow as he opens the bottle. He doesn’t look Sherlock in the eye, nor even at his face.

“Probably fine,” Sherlock replies, and slips out of his coat, hangs it by John’s on the hall tree, careful that the two don’t touch.

John slides one glass of whisky across the tabletop toward Sherlock, clearly doesn’t want to hand it to him and risk their fingers brushing against each other. Sherlock moves to take it and John picks up a stack of printer paper, clipped together at the corner because it’s too thick for a staple, but not by much. Sherlock sips; the whisky is smoky, tastes of tobacco and ginger and the sweet burn of alcohol beneath. John holds the packet of papers by one corner as if it is contaminated, ripples it in the air.

“Got us right here,” he says, and his mouth curls up in the smallest version of his anger-smirk. “Doesn’t look like much, does it.” He is not expecting a reply, so Sherlock doesn’t offer one. John motions toward the lounge and they assume their formerly usual armchairs. John plants his feet and pushes back, sliding the chair to put more space between them. Sherlock feels the motion in the pit of his stomach.

John rattles the stack of clipped-together paper (the corners are soft, there are water and coffee rings, the edges don’t line up: he has read them and reread them countless times in the intervening days) and then sets it on the tea table beside his chair, places his glass on top of it. “I don’t want this to take longer than it has to,” he says. His body—even sitting—is at attention; he is coiled like a spring, ready to pounce. Or to flee. “This, we’ll talk about in a bit.” His hands on the arms of his chair are restless, thumb of the right hand picking and scratching at the weave of the fabric, the soft, loose threads. The fingers of his left hand stretch and roll against his tremor. He has indulged Sherlock’s wish for a last meeting—quick and final—an attempt at that New Age concept of _closure_ Real People go on about in the wake of heartbreak, loss, separation. At last, he fixes his gaze on Sherlock, same dark blue eyes, more lines around them than he had before. “First.” He clears his throat. “I’m going to tell you about what it was like. For me.” Clears it again. “When you died.”

Sherlock swallows a mouthful of the whisky to wet his dry tongue, gives a terse nod. _I’m ready._ Though almost surely, he is anything but ready.

“People came. Here.” He taps the arm of the chair. “To console me. For the first week or so after. And every time someone came through the door I called out for you because we had company.” He _heh-hem_ s again; his eyes are dry. “Mrs Hudson brought up trays with tea and biscuits and I wondered why there was only enough for one. I lost track of the day, and then of the time, and I showered and shaved at two a.m. and slept through lunchtime. And when I read the papers I said _Here’s something_ to an empty room.”

Sherlock’s chest is tight and he wants nothing more than to look away, but doesn’t allow himself the luxury.

“Then one day I was coming up the stairs there.” He tips his head toward the landing. “And I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was having a heart attack, and I sat down on the third step with my head on my knees and waited to die. Didn’t call 999, didn’t even shout for Mrs Hudson. Because it was a relief.”

John clears his throat, then again, and lets his eyes close for longer than a blink before turning his steady, piercing gaze back on Sherlock. _Are you listening? Are you hearing this horror story?_

“Of course it was only a panic attack.” He shakes his head. “But I never did make it up the stairs. By the end of the day I’d found a room and I was through here. Because this was your place. _Our_ place.” Sherlock cuts a glance to the fire, bright yellow-orange, blue at the base. His right arm is too warm but he doesn’t move it. “I had those panic attacks every day, sometimes three or four in a day—and every single time, it felt like I was dying. It was terrifying. And I couldn’t avoid it. Couldn’t stop it. It was like that for _months_.”

John takes a long pull from his glass, rolls the whisky on his tongue before swallowing it.

“And I realize it’s probably mostly my own fault for not having anyone. How many soldiers did I tell to _talk it out, rely on others, don’t be embarrassed to ask for help_? . . .Dunno,” he says, and shrugs, but he does know because he’s thought it through. “I guess I didn’t want help even if it had been there. Because it was all pointless. So I drank.” John shakes his glass and the ice tinkles merrily against its walls. “Did I. Could have drunk for England. Gold medals across the board.”

John frowns hard then, and the firm set of the expression he has held until now gives way to a wash of grief—fleeting, hideous—that nearly undoes Sherlock. A quick remedy for pain: Sherlock gulps the whisky, nearly finishes it in a single go, and it burns his throat, spreads fire in his chest. John draws a deep breath.

“It was Greg Lestrade saved me from drinking myself to death. He’s a good man. A good friend.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, and it sounds too loud, surprises him. He shouldn’t be talking now. John ignores it.

“He still has my gun.”

_I put a gun—he spits, shouts—to my head._

Sherlock can imagine many things, but he cannot fathom that depth of grief. John does not deserve to suffer it. And Sherlock certainly isn’t—has never been—worthy of it. Sherlock’s eyes prickle and he blinks more than usual. His mouth and nose threaten to crumple and twist. John stares at him so intently, but Sherlock can’t read what John is trying to see, can’t calculate an appropriate visage to present.

John inhales deeply, his chest expanding and shoulders opening so he sits back in his chair a bit more, then heaves it out in a heavy sigh. He sips once more, then sets the whisky back on top of the clipped-together papers and drags his fingers over them momentarily, looking pensive. Sherlock wonders if it is his turn to talk; he does not know what he will say, if it is. Anyway, it seems that it is not.

“I gather from what you said in your email the other day that whatever you did—wherever you were—you thought you were doing it to save me.”

 _Yes! Yes! That is exactly it, John, I was trying to save you. I was desperate to save you_.

“At first I thought I needed you to explain—about Bart’s roof, about Moriarty, and where the hell you’ve been for two years. But in the end even the explanation doesn’t change anything. _Sorry_ can’t undo it.” John sits forward, elbows on his thighs, hands folded as if in prayer, and stares hard at Sherlock. It is almost unbearable, Sherlock’s heart is racing wildly, but he steadies himself and keeps his eyes open to John’s intense, challenging gaze. “So, I don’t need to hear the explanation but I need you to hear this, and take it to heart, and _never_ forget it—not for one day, not for a single minute.”

Sherlock nods, waits. There is a weighty, endless pause before John speaks again.

“Because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me that you dying—leaving—was to protect me,” John’s index fingers jut forward, pointing at Sherlock’s heart. “You very nearly killed me.”

Sherlock lets his eyes fall shut. His head is filling up with things to say, and he is trying to sort them into something orderly, humble, concise. . .If this is how it ends, he doesn’t need the last word, but he does need to say something in his own defense.

“And talking of trust,” John says, and Sherlock opens his eyes. Not finished, then. “It’s because I didn’t trust you that I never told you how I felt. Then.” He tips his head as if pointing to that other time, before. “I didn’t trust you not to eviscerate me with one of your withering looks. I didn’t trust you to be able to sort out your own feelings. I didn’t trust you to meet me where I was. And that was my stupid mistake. It’s the bigger part of why you leaving—dying—was so hard for me to accept. My own regret. About not having trusted you with the truth while I had the chance.”

John sits back, raises his glass to his lips but doesn’t drink, angles his gaze toward the fire. Setting the glass back on the tea table, he says, “Something ended that day. And what came next was awful. Probably the worst year of my life.” He looks steadily at Sherlock but his face is still closed off and unreadable. He fidgets with the edge of his thin cardigan—the same dark blue as his eyes—and there is a tone of finality in his voice as he says, “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever again.”

Sherlock thinks imagining how John suffered with his grief is probably worse than being told the full truth of it. What little John has already said ( _I put a gun. . .to my head_ ) plays on a loop in Sherlock’s brain and keeps him from sleeping, makes him forget to tell taxi drivers where he needs to go. There is much John doesn’t know—will never know—so being denied a full accounting of their time apart feels, to Sherlock, like a just punishment.

John drains his drink, sets the glass with its few remaining ice cubes on the tea table and picks up the packet of papers. Their emails, the transcripts of their online chats. Every word that passed between them in all those months. John sets it on his knee. When he speaks this time, his tone is different—milder, and cautious.

“You called yourself William.”

“It’s my name.”

“Well.” John’s face pinches, cruelly skeptical.

“Mycroft’s, too,” Sherlock says quickly. “William Mycroft Scott Holmes. And my father is William Eansworth Holmes. Our grandfather was William, as well.”

John huffs ruefully. “You lot wonder why people think the upper classes are inbred gits.”

Sherlock allows the slightest grin, then shrugs it off.

John sits with this a moment, this Holmes family full of Williams. Sherlock can see him processing it.

“I know that it isn’t—or, it wasn’t—a particular talent of yours to understand other peoples’ feelings,” John ventures, and he is fanning the corners of the stack with his thumb. “But can you understand that just showing up like that—that night at the restaurant—was not the right way to tell me? That you’re alive. That this--“ he tapped the papers “—was you.”

Sherlock looks at his glass, ice completely melted into what remains of the whisky, then at his hand curled around it. “I miscalculated,” is all he offers. John knows him, knows that for Sherlock to be so exceedingly misguided about matters of the heart was nothing out of the ordinary.

“I felt like a complete fool,” John says, and his cheeks burn with it, even now.

“I understand.”

“Do you?” John sounds as if he genuinely wonders. “You showing up there—not only _not dead_ —but not even the person I was expecting. . .I don’t know who I expected. Obviously anyone but you because that was impossible.” He hums, bites his lip. “You just. . .it completely yanked the rug out. I felt like I’d been duped. I was humiliated.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hm.”

There is a damp ring on the knee of Sherlock’s trousers from the condensation on the glass. He sips, sets it aside on the small cabinet beside his chair.

“So I was just—furious. As you know. Because being angry is easy.” He let this sit a moment, something in his eyes indicating it was a new revelation. “It’s easier than all this other stuff—this grief, and feeling foolish, and not being sure what was true, or what to trust.” He shrugged a bit, and his chin might have quivered, but it could have been a shadow thrown by the fire. “And then. This. . . _declaration_.” John picks up the stack of papers. “And what the hell do I do with that? The thing I’ve most wanted to hear from you for—“ his voice hitches on a lump in his throat and he tries to clear it away three times in rapid succession. Sherlock feels a hideous hope leap up in his chest, immediately shoves it back down, because John is still talking and there is more than one way for this to end. “For so long. Too long. _Years_. Honestly, what do I do with that _now_?” He looks up and away, blinking, and draws in a huge, shaky breath before steeling himself again.

“You said you never lied. That since that awful day. . .since then, you never lied. ‘Not once.’ And so I went back and printed all this, and I decided that I would go through every word from the very beginning, and I would believe you. I would read every single thing we said in these past few months, and let myself believe that none of it was a lie. Because, you know, I never lied. I was totally honest with you—with William, or, who I _thought_ was William—so, all right, maybe you were honest, too.”

Sherlock’s pulse is thrumming in his ears, and he has a feeling of dread, that John will catch him out, pick up on some untruth in all those words, all that time. But he didn’t lie. He’s sure he didn’t.

“And when I read it back, assuming it was all true. . .” He trails off and seems to shift the topic again; Sherlock feels so off-kilter he is glad to be sitting. “Most of what I liked about him,” John says thoughtfully, “Was that he reminded me of you—how you were. That’s what I kept noticing, reading this back.” He strokes his fingertips down the front page. “So, that made me wonder if the other things I liked about him—you—aren’t lies, they’re just new things—how you are _now_. Because you’re not the same man you were before. You can’t be.”

Sherlock’s voice is barely louder than his breathing. “No.”

“Nor me,” John says.

Sherlock can barely keep himself from hoping. His throat is burning. He wants to crawl out of his skin. He bites the inside of his lip. John’s face remains pensive, as if he’s still sorting it out. But he set up this meeting with all the facts already in evidence. Surely he’s sorted it out before now. He must have.

“Do you think of yourself as William, though?” John asks then, and it feels sudden—even harsh—despite his tone, which is merely curious.

“I never did before; I’ve been called Sherlock my whole life, because William is the common name in the family. But the more I talked with you, using that name. . .” Sherlock is thinking this through as he speaks. “When I was at school, I was called _Holmes_. And my mother always called me—“

“What?” John looks ever-so-slightly amused.

“ _Highness_. But she was being arch.” Sherlock smiles, embarrassed, and looks at the toe of his own shoe, where his leg is crossed over the other. “So in that way, _William_ quickly started to feel less like a disguise and more like just another name I’m known by. And that it was the name _you_ called me. . .” Sherlock feels like he is falling. “Made it more. . .”

John waits, then raises his eyebrows.

“Significant.”

John nods, does that pouting thing with his mouth. Sherlock is unsure of his own breath.

“Just me, though,” John says, almost like a question, then asks, “That name— _William_ —it’s just for me?”

“Yes.”

John smiles down at the pile of paper in his lap. He takes it in both hands, worries the upper corner with thumb and forefinger. “And so,” he says, and his tone is conclusive, “If all of this was true. . .” he glances up at Sherlock then, and his face—god, here it is suddenly, his wide-open, perfectly readable face—is warmed over with tenderness and some other thing Sherlock has seen but never allowed himself to observe. “Only a damned idiot would say anything right now but that all is forgiven.” And he shrugs a bit, looking so hopeful, as if he is the one in need of forgiveness.

Sherlock can only echo, “All. . .?”

“Yes. _Sherlock_.” It is the first time John has said his name aloud. “Yes, of course.”

John sets the stack of paper on the table one last time, and before he has resumed his previous posture, Sherlock has slid to his knees on the floor at John’s feet, and pressed his forehead to John’s knee. People talk of the weight that is lifted off when one feels relief, but for Sherlock, relief itself is like an avalanche, crushing and weighing him down. He would be flat on his face on the floor if it weren’t for a raging need to feel the shape and warmth of John against him.

John’s hand is a welcome, quivering reassurance as it lands on his shoulder. Sherlock’s long hands wrap around the backs of John’s calves; the corduroy trousers are suede-soft beneath the pads of his fingers. On the move now, John’s blunt fingertips glide up Sherlock’s neck, to the side of his face, and he tilts Sherlock’s chin up until their eyes meet. Sherlock straightens his back, and his hands move to the arms of the chair, lifting himself, rising to the occasion. John’s tongue darts out to moisten his lips.

Sherlock’s heart is beating in his ears again, but now it sounds like music, and he is so aware of every single sensation in this moment—he must never forget it, not ever—that he can see the threads in the weave of John’s button-up, is sure he can hear his own hair growing. His own tongue makes a slow slide out, and then back in, and his lips part, and he is certain that time is bending slow around them, they’ve wrecked the universe dear god but _nevermind_. John leans nearer now, his perfect face, those three hairs in his right eyebrow that grow in the wrong direction, end of day stubble with more grey in it than there used to be. John’s face so close to his now Sherlock can feel John’s breath against his own chin.

“Wait.”

John sits back, and he wears an expression of the same mildly panicked surprise Sherlock is feeling all through his chest. John grins and shakes his head.

“Not on your knees.”

Sherlock thinks a lifetime on his knees for the sake of John Watson seems perfectly fitting. Nonetheless, he lets the suggestion given by John’s hand on his elbow drive him to his feet. He steps back a bit, and John rises to stand. Their hands find each other, there at their sides, fingers brushing and sliding, not quite catching.

“We should be on even ground,” John says quietly, “Standing on our own feet. The first time.”

The back of John’s fingers, curled in a loose fist, drag along Sherlock’s jaw in slow motion, then unfurl behind his ear, feathery against the back of his neck, and up, cradling the base of his skull, where his brain has set everything but _John_ to a low background hum. And then John’s eyes close, over-long eyelashes  pointing down where before they’d been pointing up, so Sherlock lets his own eyes close, and then.

And then.

John’s upper lip is grizzled with sharp-edged whiskers as it settles between Sherlock’s lips. And when John’s mouth comes open slightly, his breath smells of woodsmoke and alcohol and something slightly sour. And the two square millimeters of the tip of his tongue that slip across Sherlock’s bottom lip are slick, hot as blood, self-assured. Sherlock hears a faint, worried hum somewhere in the distance yet feels it in the roof of his own mouth, behind his own nose, and knows it for his own.

John leans back and he is grinning like he’s gotten away with something, but his forehead creases are deeper than usual. “All right?” he murmurs, and Sherlock can only nod. His knees are watery and the time since he was last kissed—last offered a kiss—is calculated in years. He feels amateurish, bashful, but at the same time perfectly at home in his own skin—another event rare and distant. And now it is he who presses forward. It is terrifying, impossible, perfect: he is kissing John Watson. His heart skips in his chest and his hands float up to the front of John’s shoulder, the side of his jaw.

It is slow and cautious and sweet, like kids, like new lovers who can’t believe their luck, who are awed and humbled by even the chance to taste, to be held, to embrace, and to hear these sighs, this expulsion of held breath, this faint, silky rustle of clothing beneath callused fingers. Their arms slide and wind: the ripple of muscle in his upper back, his recently trimmed hair, the catch of stubble on his cheek, his pointed elbow, the beat of his heart.

John’s hand rests on Sherlock’s chest, right there in the center, feeling for the proof of life, the thwacking hammer of his heart against his breastbone, pushing blood hard and quick to flush his cheeks pink, make his ears burn, warm the cold tips of his fingers. And Sherlock presses kiss-softened lips against John’s eyelids, and to his forehead—here. . .and here. . .and there, too—and against his temple: John’s Watson’s head, this precious head, and inside it all of who he is, his skull so frightfully thin there between his blue eye and his tilted ear. Precious, dear, beloved head. Precious, dear, beloved John Watson.

When their mouths meet this time it is heat and need and claim-staking. They press hard to each other, squeezing, grasping, _mine_ , come closer, you are _mine_ and I want you close, _closer_ , never close enough, I would pull you inside my chest if I could, right inside me, right through me. Sighs turn to groans. The heat from the fire is far too much because the two of them are smouldering, verge of combustion, and when they break slightly apart, gasping, their chins are wet and whisker-scraped, mouth-corners painfully stretched beyond the everyday demands of speaking or of drinking tea.

John’s voice is gentle, though, in the center of this mini-tempest, and his eyes are bright, and he searches Sherlock’s face for an answer even as he asks, “May I. . .” gaze washing down Sherlock’s face, then up, “Take you into your bedroom?” Sherlock is momentarily stunned to remember that there is a room here in this dusty, too-cold flat that once belonged to him, and now must again, for John Watson is no liar.

The lamplight in the bedroom is wan and sickly and perfect, golden beneath a milky-glass shade, the room mostly shadow, as if it were candlelit. They are all shy smiles now, and an awkward distance between them as top layers of armour are discarded—John’s cardigan, Sherlock’s jacket, shoes toed off and slid beneath the edges of the bed—easy enough, there’s no meaning in it. But then they are in sock feet, shirtsleeves, and between them is the lower corner of the bed. Sherlock’s guts are suddenly potentially incendiary; he is unexploded ordinance; careful what you touch. John closes the distance and lays his hands on top of Sherlock’s where they reach for his shirt buttons.

“Your hands are trembling,” John says, so quiet it could be Sherlock’s imagination, but he looks down and sees for himself.

“Yours aren’t.”

And now John’s steady hands slip the buttons free, one after the next, between kisses and reassuring half-smiles, and when he has unfastened them all, his hands slip beneath the open placket and shift it aside, somehow without even touching the skin of Sherlock’s belly, or of his chest, so still around his held breath.

Sherlock is no longer a bomb set to go off; he is some prize whose wrapping must be peeled apart and away with care for the delicacy of what it contains. He swallows a lump in his throat, moistens his lips with his tongue. John’s hands are smooth and sure, as if he is performing a ritual, and there is something like reverence in his expression which Sherlock wants to bask in, and hide from. John has no such patience for his own buttons; he loosens the highest ones and pulls his shirt up and over his head, lets it fall to the floor beside them. Sherlock’s hand goes to John’s shoulder, the wound that brought him here—to London, to Sherlock—those years ago; his gaze is fixed on John’s face.

“It’s bad,” John says in warning, and Sherlock feels a sturdy tension beneath his fingers as he quick-traces puckered, raised, smooth, dimpled skin laid over John’s muscle and bone in an arrangement far less predictable than Sherlock had imagined it would be.

“Mine, too,” Sherlock offers. “Worse than I admitted to.”

John draws him close, chest to chest, a vast expanse of skin on skin now, and kisses him, closed-mouthed, press-and-release. “We’re alive,” John says. It holds reassurance and awe in equal measures. Sherlock nods, soft and slow, and kisses John’s cheek just below his eye.

In time they shed the rest, and _yes_ , _Sherlock’s too_ —it looks as if some beast has shredded his hip with jagged claws and rows of broken teeth—but damn it, they are alive. And now they recline on their sides face to face, shoulder to shoulder, pale and paler with raised knees bumping now and then, mouths wide and hungry for each other, breath gusting, wordless moans escaping from the unsealed edges. John’s tongue-tip finds the knotted ends of sutures inside Sherlock’s lower lip—the gash sustained when John punched him—and worries the hyper-sensitive skin all around them and it is nothing like an apology. Sherlock inhales cool air over the spot and John kisses him hard until neither of them can hold his breath any longer and they are forced to break apart.

Their hands on each other are cautious, aggressive, desperate, tender. Sherlock’s eyes narrow; he can feel the creases of concern across the bridge of his own nose. He leans up on one elbow, looking down at John’s profile: the cords of his neck flexing and softening, lips parted to allow for heavy breath, perspiration rising on his upper lip, in his hairline, pooling at the inner corner of his eye. But of course, it’s not that--not in the corner of his eye. Not at all.

“John,” Sherlock sighs out, and John whimpers against Sherlock’s bicep but does not look up, so Sherlock says again, more forcefully, “John.”

Shimmering blue eyes open wide then, and meet Sherlock’s gaze. “The pillow still smells of you,” John chokes out. “All this time. . .”

John shifts himself up and forward, kisses Sherlock hard, presses and rolls until he is hovering above, caging him in with hands flat on the mattress by his shoulders. John’s eyes are scanning, sweeping, taking in every angle and curve of Sherlock’s face, then starting again. Sherlock has never in his life felt so thoroughly, closely observed, and feels from John the same urgent need Sherlock has to not just remember, but to imprint, to tattoo, to capture these moments from every angle—every sound, every vision, every smell and touch and taste and thump of their hearts—and keep them close enough to the surface that they can be relived endlessly and at will. Sherlock encircles them both with his long-fingered hands, and John rocks and rocks above him, biting his lip and sucking his teeth, and now and again letting out a moan that is such a perfect blend of desire and sentiment that it feels like a kind of mysticism all by itself.

“Sherlock,” John breathes, and Sherlock’s heart threatens to split apart even as his fingers continue to stroke and slide, hot soft skin shifting and slipping. He thinks but does not say John’s name, and in that very moment— _John!_ —he is overwhelmed, dragged under and thrown askew. A sudden rush of heat through every nerve, and Sherlock groans as if he is dying—for it feels like enough that no one should ever be able to survive it: fiery and smothering and cruel and ecstatic. John murmurs encouragement, dips his head to kiss the corner of Sherlock’s closed eye, the sweat at his temple. He waits there, arms beginning to shiver with the exertion of supporting himself.

Sherlock is hungry for breath, fresh cool air in his lungs, and he inhales forever, melts utterly as he spends it. John’s face, when Sherlock focuses on it, is riotous—too many emotions showing on it for Sherlock to name and catalogue, despite his desperation to keep it all together and close—and Sherlock knows what must be done, and so he moves, sharp and sudden, toppling John onto his back, and they both laugh—just a bit, awkward and perfect. Sherlock leans to kiss him, and now his mouth tastes only of himself, and Sherlock imagines he can feel the sloughed-off cells of John’s tongue and the soft pink interior of his lips as they catch on his own taste buds and teeth, and Sherlock swallows them.

John is coiled to spring, his shoulders creeping toward his ears, and Sherlock tries to soothe with lazy, undemanding kisses, searches John’s face for clues.

“I. . .” John says quietly, and his fingers catch and tug in Sherlock’s hair until he frees them and combs them through, glances down at Sherlock’s collarbones, then up again to his mouth, and finally into his eyes. “I want. . .” He stretches his neck to capture Sherlock’s lower lip between his own, pulls, suckling. “I want all of you. Everything.”

“You have me. And we have time.”

Sherlock hushes, reassuring, . . . _shh. . . shh. . ._ , and kisses his way down John’s torso, rangy limbs folding tight to center him between John’s knees, and he submits for approval with a mischievous grin— _you’re going to love this_ —which John meets with a smile of his own, tucking an extra pillow under his head to keep watch. John’s hands reach again for the crown of Sherlock’s head, but Sherlock catches them both in one of his own, rests their stack of entangled fingers low on John’s belly. Now it is Sherlock who is steady, and John who shakes.

Sherlock’s mouth is wet and open and when it first descends upon him, John draws in a loud, slow gasp that threatens Sherlock’s sanity. Sherlock holds his hands tight as he begins his ministrations in earnest,  drawing sounds from John’s chest and throat that threaten to ruin him forever; but to be ruined ( _on his knees_ ) for the sake of John Watson seems a most sublime aspiration. John hums approval, and Sherlock rolls his eyes up to look at his face, John’s mouth open, eyes burning dark desire and fierce affection, yes, yes, oh my darling yes, you miracle, death took you from me but somehow we are finally home. . .

John shudders beneath him, and Sherlock moves to smooth out all his rough edges, make him know that they are there together, and that every moment of it is real, and John bites down on a shout that rings in Sherlock’s ears. Sherlock’s low belly aches and warms in sympathy, and he hums satisfaction and sighs something like relief and drags his swollen lips against John’s thigh, and then against a rumpled handful of bedding as he stretches himself along the length of John’s body, his calf draped over John’s shin, his arm belted across John’s chest, his lips to John’s ear, nuzzling, brushing, not speaking. Sherlock listens with intensity to John’s slowing, thinning breath. He shifts his embrace to feel the beat of John’s heart beneath the heel of his hand.

“Another thing I’ve decided to do,” John whispers to the darkness, and Sherlock rubs his nose upward along John’s cheek to indicate he is awake and attentive. John covers Sherlock’s hand with his own, entwines their fingers, holds him. “Is to trust you.” He lifts their hands to press his lips against Sherlock’s fingertips, and warmth shivers up Sherlock’s arm into his chest. “I didn’t want all the. . .I don’t want to carry it. So.” He turns and leans his head to meet Sherlock’s eyes. “Please don’t prove me wrong.”

“No,” Sherlock promises, then mumurs. “We always did. We put our lives in each other’s hands every day for years—trusted each other more than ourselves.”

John half-laughs; he’s right. Of course he’s right. Two unreliable narrators of their own life stories—gunfire and running for their lives and silent agreements to die together if it came to that all so much easier to contend with than unguarded words, the minefield of human emotions, the willing revelation of soft, vulnerable underbellies.

John’s eyes are bright and dark and so close to Sherlock’s face he almost has to pull back to focus on them. He slips his fingers across Sherlock’s forehead, shifting his hair, tracing the lines there that never completely smooth themselves. “Sherlock. . .” he sighs, and it is so much more than Sherlock feels worthy of. “ _Wildly in love_ , you said.” The uncertainty in those blue eyes is a needle that pricks Sherlock’s heart.

“ _Yes_.” Sherlock can barely get the word out fast enough, emphatic and final. John’s face softens into his most boyish grin, completely and utterly disarming. They will have many more moments like this, afterglow and whispers and all self-protective instincts willfully ignored, but at this very moment, Sherlock can feel his toes hanging over the edge, feel his weight tilting ever forward, and instead of terrified he is exhilarated, intoxicated, and he ventures, “Which begs the question. . .?”

John shuts his eyes for longer than a blink, and when he opens them they glitter with unshed tears. His reply is ragged as it travels over that gravel in his throat. “More than I can say.”

*

A sharp-edged blade of late-morning sunlight across his face, and John was right—the pillowslip bears a familiar scent, even after all this time. It also bears a note in John’s small, tight handwriting.

“Went foraging for sustenance. You asleep beside me—naked—in a bed we’ve shared—is the single most wondrous thing I have ever beheld. Start the kettle; I’ll bring tea and milk. John.”

Sherlock’s face feels like it will crack apart; he is sure he looks stupid, alone in a room, grinning at the back of an envelope. Regardless, he rolls and reaches for his phone, thumbs it to life.

“Dear John,

Thank you for saving my life—yet again.”

He signs it, “your, William,” backspaces and retypes, “your, Sherlock.” He taps the corner of the phone with his thumb, curls his lip thoughtfully. At last, he signs it, simply:

“Yours.”


End file.
